The Ferrara Institute of Renaissance Studies (ISR) promotes the dissemination of Italian and European Renaissance studies through the organization of seminars, conferences, and book presentations in collaboration with other cultural bodies, universities, and national and international institutes. As part of its institutional activity, it organizes meetings, collaborates on texts, studies and research, and publishes the scientific journal “Schifanoia”, which, by collecting the proceedings of the conferences, represents a qualified place of meeting and remembrance between established scholars and young researchers.

ISR began its activities in 1983, when it was established at the suggestion of the “Europe of Courts” Association with the aim of studying, based on original ideas developed by a scientific committee consisting of renowned scholars, the relationship between the courts of Northern Italy, especially Ferrara, and the rest of Europe in the Renaissance period. Since 2013, ISR has been part of the Art Museum Service of the City of Ferrara, with which it organizes an annual Week of High Renaissance Studies., an international conference aimed at presenting the latest research on specific topics chosen by the Institute’s scientific committee, which is also responsible for the selection of proposals received as a result of joining a public call for papers.

SRI also has a library of more than 9,380 volumes included in OPAC, as well as some funds of special interest such as the Cicognara Library (in microfiches), the microfilms of the Corpus of Unpublished Inventories of Latin Manuscripts, the Schatz collection of opera librettos (microfilms), numerous microfilms of music and the repertoire of Italian Poetry Musicata from 1500 to 1700 (REPIM); numerous collections of transcriptions in modern notation of vocal and instrumental music, as well as anastatic reprints of treatises and theoretical works on Renaissance music.